Of Field, of Wood & Hedgerow
Part IV: Changeling.
Gazing into the distance, she listens nearer, feels farther for the scent of the beast. Rubs the ground softly with tender feet, holds a stone between her toes and sways gently in the chattering wind.
Surely what comes must spore, in the water, on brittle, virginal snow, in the perfidious wind however bemused its stammered allusions. Surely there must be sharp vapours riding subtle astride clean airs. Surely there must be a deposed branch, an eloquent pebble in the wake. Surely is there some darker shadow below dim forest eaves, a flinty glimmer in the humus, a fleeting leafy eyeshade fluttering gentle in the tree tops?
All things that pass must step upon the world, must shift it, must slide, stroke or grind some trail. They must move decaying leaves, drip moisture in dusty hollows, break bark or silence. Be whispers of breath, softly pounding hearts, and rushing blood. Hear the far-off, crashing brine. Ripples in the sand guilelessly narrate the passage of man and beast, of rock and rain upon the idea of resting pools. Here and now, they lay a map of future and past. When she climbs the wall and gazes at the wonders, what will she do then? Demanding and patient, the garden waits for her enlightenment.
There is no sign nor gesture, not in the wind nor as blood in the water, as scent in her nose or mind. No ripple upon her neck warns her, no turning of the ground sends augers up her trembling legs. There is the welcome darkness, in the lost worlds. There are the unlit pastures, the undiscovered glades and underworlds, boughs and trunks signing toward the sky. She blows away a cloud and steps within.
She raises a hand, but it has forgotten its nature. Now it is a vague, rough thing; it feels unfit to deft purpose. She leans forward to lap up moonbeams from the glade. Around her, shadows meet, flow and quicken. Blood hastens and her mind sloughs off pretension. Tomorrow the sheep will feel unease at the remembrance gripping her hands and hair. Tomorrow the gravel will crack and ripple under her clumsy feet. Tomorrow she will be a girl in the village, tomorrow she will beat shirts on stones and hang fish in the smokehouse.
Now she can build a memory without persistence. Now she will run the path to the mountain, and taste blood upon the silver wind, feel the icy brook upon her skin. Now she will shake her fur hard against the mist, run swift and hot between curled up ferns and close tight flowers, around the trees, over the stony ground and dank detritus to the mountain. There is no course to the mountain, save the moonlit shoulder, the restless silver dreams. There is no compass, no lode to bear her up in any seeming ease.
Ease is the running, comfort is fleet upon the scarce touched earth. Yet the bond never slips; it stretches and flexes like streams of honey, like the dripping of prey’s blood. No thing will catch her, she is murky lightening of silver beam and gossamer; she is the channel of shadows in the dark. She is an interruption of the moon.
No thing will catch her, save morning. Only the bright knife of the sun might cut though the leaves and branches to find her quest undone. Only the misty breath of the warming of the world might slow her blood and turn her head aside. Then she might awaken from the dream and wonder at the sudden chill. Then she might shiver, naked in coarse radiance, alone in the wilder lands. Lost to her laundry and flock.
She will not falter. She will crest the mountain, and she will race home, to her quiet hearth, to her chores and music. She will wake abed amidst the bustle of tasks a-doing. Among the civil clatter of the first meal, among kin who know her, who worry with their gazes and wonder at her dreams, wonder that she is grazed and scratched in the morning.
It had been near her fourteenth birthday when uncle Lûris had come to visit. She remembered it because she had just got her blood for the first time, and she was filled with uncertainty and anguish. Her parents argued. It was clear that father did not care for uncle Lûris, and there was something else about the family that made him sit in his chair and ignore the world. He called Lûris a ‘funny uncle’, but not the way that mother had warned her about. This was some special variety of strangeness. Father thought it would be a good idea to keep her safe, send her away perhaps? Send her to his family.
Mother did not argue as much as father did; she was calm and asked him if he remembered the first time they had argued. He went quiet after that, not the quiet of nostalgic reverie, but the surly quiet of someone unhappily resigned to guilt or at least disquiet. The nature of the disquiet was never clear, not to her.
When uncle came, mother put her in a bath. When she got out she dabbed her dry with a blanket and uncle wrapped her in a hide. Perhaps it had once been a splendid fur. Now it was hard even to guess the creature that had grown and cherished it for all its life. There were bald and faded patches. It was large, a dire, musky wolf or hard-running stag, some mightily leaping goat of sudden rocks, some beast that knew the arts of living, that knew the tricks and wisdoms to dwell within its place, a bounded place, but whose bounds ran wider than the eye.
The hide was raw. It looked moist and dank, but when it wrapped her about, it seemed hot and dry. It smelled of blood, of musk, it smelled of rushed and desperate sex. She glanced at her ‘funny uncle’ and her eyes darted about to seek out her father, but he had left the house and would not return for hours. Her mother was serene, but there was the hint of a frown on her clear forehead.
Lûris gave her something to drink, it burned at first, but did not tear at the throat, it warmed her and set her blood rushing. She grew dizzy almost at once, the room rocked to and fro in time to her pounding heart. She could smell dust in the corners and musk on the hide; she felt naked and heavy with garb at the same time. She could not feel the hide with her skin, yet she could feel gentle draughts and hear an owl in the distance outside. Her Uncle was canting in some foreign tongue that seemed a blend of ancient Járin, the snarling of wolves, and the growling of bears, The world seemed a shade. She could almost see the sky through the daubed walls: Yaél floated like a lure in water. It sang to her in ancient tones, it shook her to her subtle core.
There was nothing more to remember, or nothing more that she would ever recall.
Ever after she had walked the woods. Ever after she would taste moonlight and wake with dew on her feet and hands, with contentment in her hammering breast. One day might she hope to master her uncommon gift, or even offer gratitude and propagation to its anonymous donor, but there was no rush.
N. Robin Crossby
